Where Are the Parents?

Once school lets out for the day, the market, where I work, is swarmed by middle school children, who squander their unspent lunch money on soda, energy drinks, candy, and chips.  One of the adult customers commented on how she used to do the same thing when she was a youth, and voiced how silly it was for the schools’ to make serving only healthy meals a strict policy.  There’s no way to monitor the kids and force them to eat nutritious food. 

She also went on to tell me about the fifteen years that she spent working in day care.  She would take in children from parents, who wanted her to conduct toilet training and teach discipline because they couldn’t be bothered to do so, or even enforce her teachings on their own time at home.  There were still others, who wanted to leave their children with her for twelve hours a day, five days a week. 

With such extreme requests as these, the question arises as to why these individuals had children to begin with?  Was the conception accidental, or as accidental as it can be if a couple neglects to use birth control?  Had they already become jaded by the responsibilities of parenthood or did they not realize it would be a full-time job from the beginning?  Or did it seem like the right next step to start a family, instead of both individuals’ hearts being fully invested in this choice?

Too often today, kids seem to be going unchecked, controlling their parents and, as a result, are a nightmare for anyone else to deal with.  These parents don’t seem to want to do any work, as they keep turning to the schools to completely take care of their children’s well-being from discipline to good study habits and grades to healthy eating.  All of these habits and values must start at home and be instilled at an early age; otherwise the child seems to be nearly unreachable. Unless, hopefully, once they become adults, they will recognize the value of all that their parents wanted them to do, but never taught or enforced.

I understand that it’s a lot of work to be a parent.  One devotes inordinate amounts of time, energy, resources, and money into supporting and raising a child.  But, I believe, that all of the things that one invests mean nothing unless also totally investing oneself.  I feel that many parents of these troubled and misguided children are barely present in their lives, knowing little of what their kids are learning in school, who their friends are, what interests they are developing, and so on.  It’s easier for these parents to just throw money and new gadgets at them to make up for what they’re missing. 

Furthermore, this teaches the kids that they are entitled to have anything that they want.  One day at the market, a middle school boy retorted to my greeting of how he was doing, with something to the effect of not being well because he had to pay for all of the treats that he had loaded onto the counter.  I was so appalled that I couldn’t think of a witty comeback quickly enough.  All I managed was something about how everyone has to pay for the products that they want. 

And with a comment like that, I seriously wonder how many other goodies he had stashed away in his pockets.  It’s entirely possible, since the market has been fraught with thefts by these students.  The problem has reached such magnitude that the kids are no longer allowed to bring their backpacks into the store and only a few may enter at a time, so that they can be closely monitored by the cashier and the sentinel stationed by the door.

I worry about the future outlook for this new generation.